circleofthreefandomcom-20200213-history
So Mote It Be
So Mote It Be is the first book of the Circle of Three series. Summary Book Description :With this ribbon I do bind :My heart to yours and yours to mine. :Love, I call you, come to me, :As is my will, so mote it be. Kate cast the love spell with results unforeseen. She cannot stop it by herself, but the book of spells tells her of two strangers who can help her-- if only she can find them. Further Info Kate Morgan is a popular girl in her sophomore year at Beecher Falls High. She plays on the school basketball team, and with her friends Sherrie Adams, Tara Redding, and Jessica Talbot, she is helping to plan the school Valentine's Day dance. Meanwhile, she is pining over the school's star football player, Scott Coogan. One day, in her history class, she is assigned a term paper on the witchcraft persecutions in medieval Europe. Among the stack of historical books she takes out of the library, she also accidentally took out a real spell book, Spells and Charms for the Modern Witch. While skeptical at first, she is ultimately decides to try casting the "Come to Me Love Spell" to attract Scott, figuring she has nothing to lose. The next day at school, she finds herself the center of all male attention, much to the bemusement of her friends and chagrin of most of the girls in school. Among the admirers is her target, and Scott asks her to the Valentine's dance. Flush with success, she decides to try another spell to help her with her chemistry midterm. Things start to go downhill the next day. First Kate learns that Scott had asked another girl, Terri Fletcher, to go to the dance the day before he asked Kate. Then a few days later, the chemistry midterms are returned, and Kate received a 97-- which threw the grading curve and meant that many of her classmates, including Tara, failed the test. Tara is especially hurt because she had asked Kate to study with her, and her failing grade means that she would not be allowed to play in any basketball games for two weeks. To make matters worse, after class, she has run-in with Terri Fletcher. She takes refuge in the library, and in her misery, she hatches a plan to fix her situation. She asks the circulation desk who took out the spell book before her, hoping that someone else in the school knows enough about magic to help her. One person had checked it out seven times before her: Annie Crandall, a quiet, brainy girl in her chemistry class, whom Kate could not imagine being involved with witchcraft. With nowhere left to turn, Kate approaches Annie at lunch. At first, Annie pretends not to know what Kate is talking about, but after some prodding, she invites Kate over to her house after school. At Annie's house, Annie reveals that she is much more deeply interested in witchcraft than Kate would have suspected; she owns her own copy of Spells and Charms for the Modern Witch, as well as some magical supplies like a small cauldron and incense. However, she explains that her spells had not been as successful as Kate's: her attempt to make it snow led to the pipes in her house bursting, and her attempt to summon a familiar (a witch's companion animal) summoned a lot of mice. Because of her bad luck with magic, Annie is hesitant to try any more, but Kate convinces her to cast a spell with her, a ritual for reversing bad luck. In the course of the ritual, Annie explains to Kate some of the mistakes Kate made while casting her spells, such as not casting a circle and not understanding about how magical energy works. Kate leaves Annie's optimistic about the next day and plans to hang out with her more. Her optimism is short-lived. When she gets to school the next day, she finds that Scott and the rest of the football team has nominated her for Valentine's Day Queen, which arouses the further ire of the other girls. She also finds herself pitted against Terri Fletcher for that role as well. To make matters worse, Terri falls down the stairs one day, breaking her ankle, just as Kate and Annie pass her, and she accuses Annie of pushing her. Kate and Annie flee to the library, where they decide to check the circulation card of the recently-returned spell book for another person to ask for help. The name before Annie's had been scribbled out, but they soon discern the name Cooper Rivers, whom Kate describes as "one of the most antisocial people at Beecher Falls High", a punk rocker with ever-changing hair and vinyl pants. After some hesitation, they go off to the music rooms to find her. Cooper denies any knowledge of witchcraft and brushes them off, but Annie leaves her address in her guitar case and invites her to come over if she changes her mind. Meanwhile, the high school rumor mill has been at work, convincing everyone in the school that Annie pushed Terri down the stairs, and many people believe that Annie must have done it to impress Kate. While this garners Kate the first sympathy she has had in the past week, it is no comfort watching her new friend become the school pariah. That Friday, Kate and Annie commisserate at Annie's house about the week's events and witchcraft, but are interrupted by the surprise arrival of Cooper. Though the conversation has a rough start, Cooper eventually reveals that she has some more experience with witchcraft than she previously let on, but she does not go into much detail. She recommends that the next day they go to Crones' Circle, the witch bookstore where Annie bought her copy of the spell book and her supplies. At Crones' Circle, they meet Sophia, one of the store's owners and a practicing Wiccan. She recommends some books to them and explains that magical energy can not be recalled once it is sent out, but it can be neutralized. She also explains about the "Law of Three", that magical energy sent out will return to the caster threefold, for good or ill, and that magic like Kate's love spell is manipulative and negative consequences are to be expected. Kate leaves Annie and Cooper at the store to meet up with Sherrie, Tara, and Jessica to look for costumes for the Valentine's dance. She muses on the divide between the two worlds she now inhabits and wonders if there is any reconciling the two. At Annie's house the next day, Kate, Annie, and Cooper discuss witchcraft and Wiccan practice. Because they do not want to risk more magical mishaps by trying to neutralize Kate's spells right away, to practice they decide to raise energy by word association. Kate feels exhilarated by the exercise, but again begins to worry about how she would fit witchcraft into her more mainstream lifestyle. The next time she sees Annie and Cooper at school, she tries to convince them that her spells just need to run their course and there is no need for them to pursue witchcraft any further. She soon makes it clear that she is mostly concerned about her social status and appearing "normal", and after a few thoughtless statements, Annie runs away crying and Cooper follows her. As Kate walk home from school, Cooper catches up with her. Cooper explains her full magical past: her grandmother was a practitioner of Scottish folk magic and used to teach the young Cooper various magical exercises and protection spells. When her mother got wind of what was going on, she and her grandmother had a huge fight, and they never fully reconciled before she died a few years later. Cooper tells Kate that by trying so hard to be "normal" she is running the risk of being as unhappy as both Cooper's mother and grandmother, and that she is supressing something really wonderful about herself. However, Kate is still not willing to go back to practicing witchcraft. Later that night, however, Kate heads over to Crones' Circle alone and meets another witch, Archer. Archer does Tarot card readings at the shop, and Kate asks for one. The reading accurately describes Kate's situation, and it ends with the Three of Cups, which Archer explains "represents the perfection of friendship and the beginning of something very special," if Kate is willing to take down the barriers she knows she needs to to achieve it. At school the next day, Kate apologizes to Cooper and asks her to do a ritual the next night, during the full moon. Cooper bristles, feeling as if Kate has been taking advantage of her, being nice only when her other friends are out of sight and when she needs help. She also reveals that Annie has been suspended because Terri Fletcher's parents were pressing for a disciplinary hearing. She ends by telling Kate to never speak to her again and to fix her own problems before walking away. Upset, Kate takes out her anger and sadness on her own Valentine's Queen posters, tearing them all into pieces, before leaving school and running to Annie's house. Once Annie lets her in, Kate apologizes profusely and explains about Cooper's grandmother and Archer's Tarot reading, as well as her ideas for a ritual. Annie accepts her apology and promises to convince Cooper to take part in the ritual. Kate then goes home, sews three robes for them, and writes out the ritual in her head late into the night. The next day at school, Cooper grudgingly agrees to take part in the ritual, and Kate gives her a list of things to bring and tells her to meet at a cove on Ryder Beach that night. Telling her parents that she is going to Tara's house to study, Kate slips off to the beach after dinner. After casting the circle, they burn a Valentine's Queen poster, her chemistry midterm, and the ribbon and paper heart from the Come to Me Love Spell. They then sing a chant that Kate had written, asking the fire to burn away the bad energy that she put out. Finally, they ask the universe to send them more positive energies, by putting a wish into a helium ballon and letting them go; Annie wishes to worry less, Cooper wishes that she could give people more of a chance, and Kate wishes to be less afraid of changing. The next day at school, guys seem barely seem to notice her and she fails a chemistry quiz. Scott approaches her at lunch and tells her he can not go to the dance with her-- not because he has stopped liking her, but because he is going to be visiting colleges with a football scout. Though she is elated at not losing her boyfriend, she wonders what it means with regards to the spell. Cooper opines that the spell just got him interested, but once he got to know Kate, he truly found her compatible. While they are talking, Terri Fletcher approaches them and lets them know that she realized that she just slipped on the stairs and has withdrawn her complaint against Annie. Cooper then asks Kate if she would be willing to join her and Annie for more circles and witchcraft study. Not wanting to upset the balance, Kate is initally unsure. But she goes to Annie's the next night with a proposition for them: she will continue to study witchcraft with them if they come to the Valentine's dance with her. After some protest, they agree, and they go to the dance as the Good Fairies from "Sleeping Beauty". They are assured that the last of the magic had cleared up when Terri wins Valentine's Queen. They toast to magic-- only to be interuppted by Sherrie, who then turns to tell the rest of her crowd. Category:The Books